From: "alex" <
alxmoeller@...>
To: <
cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Why borrow 'seven'? (was: IE right & 10)
> Exu Yangi wrote:
> > As for being a taboo word, and hence borrowed from elsewhere ---
> > usually taboo words find their replacements from within the native
> > stock. Withness Japanese shi (death;four) being replaced from another
> > counting heirarchy.
> >
>
>
> I never studied sinology but I have a colleague which is chinesse and she
> told me in chinesse the word for "death" is the same as the word for
"four"
> and that word is "s1". Appropiate phonetic to Japanese "shi" and has the
> same meaning.Is this a loan from Chiness in Japanesse or both developed
from
> the same root?
Well, I am no sinologist (nor a japanologist), either, but I think that:
1. Japanese is an Altaic language (belonging to the "wider" Altaic
(super-)stock, whereas Turk., Mong. & Tung. form the "core-Altaic"), and
Altaic languages are thought to belong to the Nostratic macrophylum.
2. Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family, which is considered a
member of the Sino-Caucasic or Dene-Caucasic macrophylum.
3. We would have to compare the proto-language forms to learn what the
Proto-Japanese (Altaic, Nostratic) & Proto-Sinetic (Proto-Sino-Tibetan,
Dene-Caucasian) reconstructions might have looked like. By the way, what was
the Old Japanese form of "shi", what was the Old Chinese form???
4. Yes, the words could be both from a single "root", but, perhaps,
rather than any common "heritage", one of them was a loan. As far as I can
remember (but I may be wrong (but I have read things like that so many times
(as far as I can remember, I should write, again :)))), there was a time
when Chinese had a certain influence on the Japanese culture and language
(e.g. Kanji and so on, 'right?), therefore it is quite probable that the way
of borrowing was Chinese > Japanese, and not vice versa.
I hope I have answered your question a little. If the word means "4" &
"death" in both languages, the word being a loan is, in my view, the only
posssibilitiiieeeyeah...
Petusek